Here and Now

Yeah, those are dreaded words on Christmas Eve/Day.  I get it.  When Rachel was like 4 I refurbished and decorated a homemade dollhouse that she still talks about today - AFTER the 11:00 PM worship service... Yep.  I'm a procrastinator.  I get it.  My fault. Baby Blues Sunday summed it up for a lot of us: (click to see the whole thing) But... Is it really that bad?  And they LOVE it.  And isn't love for your kids about sacrifice?  That "some assembly required" sacrifice is really pretty small, isn't it?  We act like it's such a big deal.  But the day comes when they just get iPads or whatever that completely disconnects them from the family Christmas day and instead of "Dad, look how cool this is - come put it together with/for me" it's "Thanks...see ya later..."  Or... "Thnx c u" or whatever... I'm trying to be less like Darryl in Baby Blues these days.  Savor the moment.  They're still little.  I want to s...

Success.  How do you define it? That's the big question in the digital world.  In epublishing, in the new music world, in painting or photography or whatever: how do you know when you've "made it"?  When you can retire on the residuals?  Maybe, if that's your goal.  But, if you don't have a definition for success, you don't know when you've achieved it. For some it's recognition.  Getting the most hits on a blog post, a YouTube video, retweet, whatever - that's success.  Being at the top.  There's no gain other than having achieved the top spot.  It's beating the video game. It's a public recognition of who you are and what you've done.  But for art, it's deeper.  It's a validation that whatever the artist feels/experiences when creating the art connects with another person.  Appreciation might be a better word.  Enough appreciation leads to sales.  Always.  'Cause that's how we show our appreciation.  W...

So if the digital world is flat, or nearly so, then how do we stand out? Interestingly, Seth Godin just talked about that  yesterday  - the importance of not wasting people's time, their attention, their contact.  The cliche is you only get one chance to make a first impression, right?  Make sure you don't blow it. A couple days ago Godin also talked something similar - the  erosion in the paid media pyramid  - the point being that in the old model, almost everybody "in the media" was part of the machine of "mass media" production.  The future, he posits, is more like a patronage model.  You pay more for what you like - but you only buy what YOU like, you don't just choose from the limited array of what's available.  Sounds a bit like what  Derek Webb  was saying, doesn't it? But...how do you stand out?  How do you make it?  It's no magic formula.  It's vision, creativity and hard work. For every one artist who ...

Saw this at  Bonkers World  and thought it apropos of what I was talking about yesterday: This is probably true whether you're famous or not - I have the occasional drop in here on the blog because of content*, but almost everybody who comes here knows me well.  And that's the only reason they come back.   I read Aaron's blog and Michael's blog all the time because I know them.   Anyway, the point is that's how things work in the new digital economy, if you will.  It's all relationship and word of mouth - it's all circles and who you know, or, maybe it's who you know who they know (no, wait, is that right?  I need a flowchart or something...).  Anyway, it's not "trickle down" anymore, it's...seep out?   * Like the day the Priest called from Alabama

A long time ago (5 years ago*), I posted a series here about grace, and in  one post  I mentioned a guy by the name of Greg Adkins who tried a creative experiment that just blew me away: write & record a song a week for a year.  He called it, creatively enough, "52 songs in 52 weeks."  He pulled it off (Ended up with 60 songs - check it out  here **)  As near as I can recall, he was the first on my radar to do it (probably not the first, but I do remember searching back in the day - like '03 - when he was doing this and not finding anybody else trying such an ambitious stunt) though if you Google 52 songs in 52 weeks, you'll find others who have done it or are doing it like  Amy Raasch ,  Power ,  Donewaiting ,  David Ritter , and it looks like some guy named  James Hersch  has pulled it off in a marketable sort of way.*** So I happen on this post from  Dork Tower  about a guy who is  writing twelve books i...

I tried to talk about this a while ago  here : giving music away is actually beneficial to artists today. But  Derek Webb  who started  NoiseTrade  (which is an awesome site for trying out new music for free*, by the way - go there, grab new stuff - you won't regret it) says it way more eloquently - and from the "insiders" perspective.  Check it out. *Okay, it costs you your email address - but you can opt out as soon as you get that first "spam" from the artist - and, really, I get like one email a month or every six weeks or so from each artist - sometimes not even that often...